Archive for the ‘Thought Leadership’ Category

Adobe Flash Platform Services Unveiled – Powered by Gigya

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Adobe unveiled its new Flash Platform Services at the Adobe MAX conference last week, featuring the Gigya-powered services in the keynotes on both Monday and Tuesday.  Adobe Flash Platform Services are online, hosted services that allow developers to add innovative capabilities to Web applications with a predictable, cost efficient deployment model.  Developers, advertisers and publishers are now using Adobe Flash Platform Services to make Web applications sharable, social, and collaborative.

It was amazing to see the enthusiastic response from the thousands of developers that filled every nook of the show, and our hats are off to the fantastic team at Adobe that worked so hard to bring this important product to market. In addition to the distribution services powered by Gigya, coming soon to Flash Platform Services are social services powered by Gigya, which enable simplified implementation and management of Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter,  Y!OS, though a single API.

You can learn more about how to access the services, available for Flash Pro, Flexbuilder 3 and Dreamweaver at http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/services/


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Applying Social Technologies – Part 3

Monday, July 20th, 2009

- Continued from 7/13/09

TECHNOLOGIES SIMPLIFIED

The services offered by social networks and web mail platforms are in many cases built on top of technology standards.  These standards include OpenID and OAuth.

OpenID is an open decentralized standard for user authentication and access control.  Publishers who accept OpenID allow users to login with that consistent digital identity.  Sites or companies that provide OpenIDs allow users to take their credentials from these sites and use them to login to other sites.  Providers include AOL, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, PayPal and Yahoo, among others.  There are over 27,000 sites that accept credentials from OpenID providers for login and registration purposes.

Publishers integrating OAuth can authenticate users in a way similar way to that of OpenID.  OAuth is different however, because it also gives publishers a session key that enables those publishers to access profile and social graph data.

Companies providing social technologies through their APIs adhere to these standards.  The chart below outlines which standards these social APIs are using.

The Facebook platform and associated FBML (Facebook Markup Language) were built as a custom standard that functions in a similar way to a combination of Open ID and OAuth, but which does not actually use those standards and protocols.

IMPLEMENTATION CONSIDERATIONS AND CHALLENGES

There are 5 major challenges when implementing these social technologies.  They include:

1.    APIs lack universality:  Each API has different integration requirements and different core features.  For example, even though MySpace and Yahoo are OpenID providers, implementation for each is significantly different and requires new work for site developers.   Publishers who want to integrate multiple social APIs may require additional expertise and resources.

2.    Managing updates to APIs is time-consuming:  API providers make changes frequently, requiring sites using these APIs to make updates to their code each time a new version is released.

3.    New APIs continue to open up:  As additional social networks and identity providers open up, sites who want to give users choice will need to integrate them.   For example, Twitter and Yahoo made their APIs available in early 2009.  Publishers who want to give users choice will need ongoing technical support to integrate and manage new APIs.

4.    API providers do not offer dedicated support: API providers only offer self-service support.  While there are several resources for developers on each social networking site’s developers’ wiki, there are no in-person support services available.

5.    APIs can be integrated in different ways:  There is no single right way to integrate the APIs.  An initial integration could allow users to authenticate or login to their site using credentials from a social network.  A secondary integration step might be to enable users to invite friends to the site, or update their status while on the site.  In a deeper integration, sites could create activities like games, quizzes, polls, virtual chats or group viewing experiences.  The results of these activities can be published in newsfeeds to drive traffic back to the site.

Next week: GIGYA SOCIALIZE

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Applying Social Technologies – Part 2

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Continued from 7/6/09

NEW SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES: WHAT THEY DO
Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn grew by creating opportunities for people to recreate their offline personal networks through online tools.  Now they are making those networks more widely available to publishers – through Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, and Sign in with Twitter  –  to enable users to register, connect and socialize on sites outside of the social networks.  These services allow publishers to authenticate users, to promote by publishing content and activity back to the social network the user belongs to,  to use profile data to enhance the site experience, and to tap into a user’s friend list (also called the social graph) to provide a more social experience.  These services are delivered via APIs, or application programming interfaces, which are sets of routines or data structures that allow publishers to get information from, and send data to, the social networks.

Authenticate
Sites now can enable users to login in one-click to using existing online identities.  When users login for the first time, sites can also invite users to register.   Facebook reports that sites using social APIs to authenticate users have seen as many as 2 out of 3 new registrants use their Facebook identity, and those users have about 50% more engagement on sites.

Promote
Sites can enable users to publish site content, and even their own activity, to the newsfeed or notification systems of their social network.  These communications reach a broad audience of that user’s friends and can drive traffic back to the publisher’s site.  For example, a user who takes a quiz can choose to share their results with friends by publishing them to their social network via a status update or newsfeed item.  Friends who see these newsfeed updates can then return to the site and take the quiz themselves.

Customize
 Once a user authenticates, publishers can access user data such as profile and friend information.  This information varies by provider, but includes everything from name and photo, to contact information like email address, or to deeper profile information such as interests, birthday, age, education.  Sites can use this information to customize the experience for each user.  For example, when a user authenticates, the publisher can get greet the user by name, suggest content based on interests, show ads based on age, and present content based on geography like local events or recently reviewed restaurants in their area.

Socialize
 Enabling users to socialize is to give them the ability to connect with friends in the context of your site’s content and activity. Publishers have found that showing what is “most popular” among a site’s community drives interaction.  Social APIs enable publishers to go one level deeper, for example displaying what is most popular on that site among a user’s friends, what those friends are saying via comments, or how those friends have voted in an online poll.

These are a few conceptual examples of the types of social implementations that are possible.  Let’s  take a look at a few case studies.

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES IN ACTION:
Authenticate, Customize, Promote
Flixster was one of the first sites to add social functionality and to integrate MySpaceID.  Users who visit this popular movie reviews site can create a Flixster account using their MySpace username and password.  This step saves time for users who want to participate in a recognized way, for example by adding a review, but do not want to start the registration process from scratch.  When a user authenticates with MySpaceID they also allow Flixster to access their MySpace profile information.  This information is used by Flixster to recommend movies that are unique to each user.  For example, if a user has a reference to sports in their MySpace profile, then Flixster can recommend sports movies like Rudy or Hoosiers to watch or potentially review.

Authenticate, Socialize, Promote
One of the most successful implementations of these new social technologies was the use of Facebook Connect during the recent presidential election.   CNN enabled users watching the inauguration to authenticate on CNN.com via their Facebook account and update their status while watching the event.   These status updates were published to newsfeeds and other friends viewing these updates in real-time had an incentive to login to CNN.com and participate in the same live event.

Authenticate, Socialize, Promote
Ustream is an example of a site using Sign in with Twitter.  This implementation allows users to authenticate using Twitter credentials, but also to tweet (send a short message) about the video they are watching in real time.  Tweets not only appear on the site, but they also appear in the user’s Twitter feed, driving traffic back to the site.  In one example, users are watching the 2009 NHL playoff matchup between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Carolina Hurricanes and tweeting about the hockey match.

Brand Sites Go Social
Publishers are not the only content owners who can take advantage of these social APIs.  Brands can also integrate these technologies to connect users to the brand and to each other.    Red Bull is an example of a brand that has incorporated social technologies in their web site.

Red Bull integrated Facebook Connect so fans could login to their landing page and comment on extreme sports articles.  In another example , users are discussing a news brief on Shaun White.  Once the user leaves a comment, that comment is published to the user’s newsfeed.

These examples demonstrate how publishers and brands can remove barriers for users to login to their sites and interact with other users.   On each platform, publisher sites benefitted from using these technologies.  The CNN.com integration, for example, yielded 2 million status updates at a rate of 4,000 updates per minute for an hour long speech .

Next week: Technologies Simplified

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Jeremiah Owyang on Gigya Socialize “Get Ready As Corporate Sites and Social Networks Start To Connect”

Monday, July 13th, 2009

In his blog post today, Jeremiah Owyang comments on the situation, opportunity, challenges and solutions for brands looking to make their web presence more social.

He says:  “In a recent report titled the “Future of the Social Web” we found that we are entering the era of social colonization, every webpage and experience will be social–even if brands choose not to participate.  I spent time with Palo Alto startup Gigya who now has a product that enables brands to quickly allow users to login using third party identities (like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook) quickly to a corporate web experience. Right now, brands are ‘Pollinating’ the social web by letting their corporate created content spread to social networks. As a result, companies are going to start aggregating conversations –the natural reaction to centralize trusted discussions.”

Jeremiah does a nice job of laying out a getting started plan for brands – while it will certainly take some new skill sets we at Gigya are trying to make it as easy as possible for brands to take advantage of powerful the new tools provided by Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others.

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Applying Social Technologies – Part 1

Monday, July 6th, 2009

How publishers and advertisers can use Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter and OpenID to Increase Registrations, Traffic and Engagement

Social networks and features, from Facebook and Twitter to newsfeeds and status updates, have changed forever how consumers use the Web, challenging publishers and advertisers with “destination” websites to find ways to remain relevant to core users as well as engage and grow new audiences. Rather than a challenge of content innovation, the challenge instead centers on how to improve user experience in light of how people are using the web today. From News to eCommerce to Entertainment, almost any site can better engage and grow its audience by creating a user-centric and social experience, one that makes use of newly available technologies to enable a more accessible, personalized, engaging and ultimately shareable experience.

If you have a website and want to better understand Facebook Connect, MySpaceID, Sign in with Twitter and OpenID; why it makes sense to add authentication and social functionality using these providers; or how new services can help simplify the implementation and management process, this series is for you. From increasing user registrations to enabling rich social features, many tools and services are available today to help publishers successfully evolve their user experience. This blog series will touch on the key trends dictating this evolution; introduce, define and provide guidelines for using the key social technologies available today; show case-study examples of how industry leaders are already using these technologies to redefine what it means to provide a great user experience on the web; and show how new services can make implementation easier than ever.

Few today doubt the pervasiveness and influence of social networks and other participatory social media. Participation has reached not only new highs but new levels of engagement. According to comScore , more than one billion people worldwide are using social networks. A recent Forrester Research study found that 75% of U.S. online adults participated in social media in some way in 2008, up from 56% in 2007, with increased participation in every category measured: from creating content to commenting to sharing. Beyond sheer participation, several specific trends are forcing publishers to rethink how they can not only survive but thrive in this new internet landscape:

  • Content goes portable, users are in control – YouTube innovated by making videos portable, providing users with code they could paste directly into their MySpace profile. Now publishers from the New York Times to Electronic Arts are making their content portable via these widgets, RSS feeds and other formats. On their profile pages, start pages, and blogs, users are now consuming content how and where they want it.
  • Everything is better with friends – Facebook and Twitter demonstrated that knowing what your friends are reading, watching, saying, and thinking, is both compelling and influential. Friends’ comments or tweets are de facto recommendations which let others know what to embrace and what to avoid. Additionally, friends make the web more fun.
  • Newsfeeds revolutionize content discovery – In the early days of the Internet, editors at the major portals helped users discover new web content. Then search engines applied the wisdom of the crowd to help users find what they are looking for. Now newsfeeds are a primary way that people discover new web content; by reading about what their friends, and friends of friends, are doing and recommending online.
  • Identity is user-centric – Users suffering from registration fatigue are finding that more often than not they can avoid recreating accounts. Instead, they can take their online identity with them via one of many identity providers, from their social network to their webmail account, and use it to sign in to their favorite sites.

Read Part 2 in Next Monday’s Post:

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